Shattered
by TwilightChild999
Summary: Rumpelstiltskin has a vision of his son's death two years before the dark curse is cast. Determined to change their path, he changes the nature of some of his deals, starting with his deal with Belle. But the dark curse feeds off his knowledge and throws a wrench in his plans. It incorporates his vision into their cursed reality to convince him that his son is already dead.
1. Prologue

This prologue is obscenely short, but the rest of the chapters are longer. I do not own Once Upon a Time or any of its characters.

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"I need this birth to undo a curse," the Dark One said. "There's no one I'd love more completely than a child."

"You…you're certain of that. To use a child—"

Rumpelstiltskin's reptilian eyes hardened. "I'm certain because I've had one."

Belle's mouth fell open. It took a dozen rapid blinks before she snapped her jaw shut. Finally: " _Had_ …you say you—"

The scorching pain he shuttered behind a mask of blankness with a hint of sneer made her heart clench until it wrung a film of tears from her.

"You understand your duties?" He ground out.

She nodded.

"You will not be required to sleep with me."

She blinked again. "Then how would—"

"Magic, dearie," he grinned and wiggled his fingers.

Belle swallowed a sudden burst of disappointment. "Why can't we do it the old-fashioned way?"

The shock of silence that followed made a blush burn its way up from her chest to her scalp.

"…what?" His voice was as bewildered as her stuttering heart.


	2. Chapter 1: Cursed

Once Upon A Time and its characters are not my doing. They do not belong to me. I just play with their lives like everyone else. Poor fools...

Chapter 1

Cursed

Storybrook

Rumpelstiltskin couldn't remember shedding so many tears, even in those years he' drowned in them, when his life was hopeless waiting, when even if the visions pointed him to near-certainty of success he would still choke on his fears and insecurities that he would never hold his son again.

Now, his arms weren't empty. His little daughter with blue barrettes and brown curly pigtails grabbed at his wet nose, nearly sticking her tiny thumbnail into his nostril.

He choked on a surprised laugh and anyone who saw him with soaking wet cheeks rocking back and forth in hospital scrubs with a child in his lap, laughing hoarsely would surely think him mad. He _was_ mad. Wouldn't a man who'd died so many times have a right to be? At what point of losing everything were you allowed to lose yourself?

The cricket was watching him, he knew, so there was a witness to his madness. He didn't care. A little Rosy-posy-cheeked girl with his brown eyes existed, and he'd humor her Rosy smile forever, and destroy anything that ever made her cry.

He'd failed his son and grandson. He failed them so completely that he even attempted to murder one in another world. He'd tried to die a hero so everyone he loved could remain safe and happy, but that was taken from him. His son was taken from him, then his freedom and his sanity, then he threw everything and everyone else away, but this…

A little Rosy-posy with her brown eyes and blue barrettes was new to the world. He'd failed her before she was born with his cowardly near-suicide, but now…

"…It's hard to tell what's real," he told his little one. "If you're just a dying dream comforting an old monster bleeding out beside his only child's grave."

The child clapped her hands with glee as if he were reciting poetry to her. He smiled through his tears, keeping a thread-worn effort up for her. "I don't think I'm immortal anymore…. If this is real, if I'm here…and if you're here…I'll stay. I'll stay long enough to make sure you stay a lot longer."

Isabelle put her hand to her mouth to stifle her sob of relief from escaping the observation room. She closed her eyes to trap the tears. She could feel Archie step closer, but he didn't reach out to touch her, knowing how she felt about being trapped in by anyone, and she was grateful.

Gold remembered. He remembered seeing Bea, or at least thought he did, like some euphoric dream he struggled to decipher.

Then again, he also remembered the dark vault, and wondered if he was in the underworld. Maybe he was allowed a moment with his son before being put in a nightmare asylum where shadows with the faces of his loved ones come to him, show him everything he could have had if he had been a better man, then take it all away from him.

His arms tightened around the child in his lap in response to the thought, and she grunted and wiggled in protest in a bid to be free.

He kissed the crown of her head in response, tender little kisses at the line where soft, sweet-smelling baby skin mets soft new hair and she stilled with a coo before bumping her fists against him in excitement and wiggling again.

"Someone's almost ready to walk…" He says hoarsely, then clears his throat. "I missed your birth…like Bea's…"

In the other room, Belle's heart clenched like a stone fist.

"But I don't…" He paused and shook his head. "I WON'T miss any more…"

There was a knock in the observation room and Dr. Whale entered. He looked between the two people in the room then to the patient rocking in the padded room with a toddler on his lap. He cleared his throat and looked away uncomfortably. "The patient needs his rest. It's nearly time for his medication."

Isabelle shivered and rubbed her arms. "Do you really have to keep him on those awful drugs?"

"Hospital policy. You may think he have a breakthrough with him Miss French—"

"GOLD."

Dr. Hopper and Whale both looked at her with surprise. She raised her chin in challenge, her tear-filled eyes unyielding.

"…Mrs. Gold, he may seem to have had a break through, but his last suicide attempt wasn't that long ago."

She swallowed and closed her eyes. The word "suicide" echoed as if her head had become a hollow drum.

She could hear Dr. Hopper shuffle closer. "Dr. Whale is right. The fact that he's showing remarkable improvement today only speaks well for his current routine and medication. Once he's well enough to return home with you we can talk about slowly weening him off, so he can go about life without them again, but…anti-depressants and antipsychotics are never something you want to suddenly stop taking. The consequences to someone unstable can be catastrophic.

Isabelle kept herself behind her closed eyes and folded arms, gripping each arm tightly in her hands until her knuckles turned white. If she could block the two men in the room with her out she could imagine that it was her decision, that they valued her opinion, that she could let her daughter stay in the arms of her papa for as long as he needed her to heal his broken heart. She could imagine that he'd look at her with light and life in his eyes, and that when she did go in to her deceptively fragile looking husband in his open backed hospital gown rocking against the padded walls, he would look up at her with a sure smile and tell her he's alright, that he'll try, and that he's ready to go home, and like a fairy tale he'll take her hand and they'll find his clothes, and together they'll walk hand-in-hand from the hospital to go home and live as a family, happily ever after.

Instead, when the other two men stood close to her in the narrow observation room and spoke to one another professionally, sterilely, detached to one another as if the decisions were all theirs and she just happened to be in the room with them, all she could see were hands pushing, pulling, throwing and pinning her husband down until bruises bloomed on his thin limbs, the way he bucked against them and snapped and swung at them with all his exhausted might, and his wild pleading eyes that sought her out in the room even as the orderlies physically restrained her from interfering while they held him down like an animal and ejected a sedative into him.

"Please, Belle," he'd called out. "Please, please, just let me die!"

When they'd found him after months of having been missing he was dehydrated and malnourished. His face was covered in scratches, mud, and tears, and he gulped ragged shuddering breaths and rocked against the headstone the town had bought for his son while he was still missing, presumed kidnapped and possibly murdered by the same culprit that had murdered 14-year-old Bailey.

Some speculated while Robert was missing that he had been responsible for his son's death, but Belle knew the love he had for his son and never believed a word of it. Once he'd been examined by doctors, the signs of restraints that cut into his wrists and ankles and signs of abuse he couldn't have inflicted on himself made it clear that he had been held captive, too, that whoever had kidnapped and held the son had kidnapped and held the father, which had brought a slew of questions from the authorities that the man who survived his captivity never managed to answer coherently. In his more lucid questionings the prominent words he would mumble were "witch, green, cage, dagger, and slave."

Enslaved with a dagger by a green witch, kept in a cage while his son died.

Her heart clenched. She remembered Bailey, though she often struggled to recall his face or voice. When she thought of him it was often as the adult he might have been had he grown up, and that confused her.

A lot confused her, including the sound of stilettos in the hall outside.

The mayor of the town dressed in all black except for her blood red lipstick was out in the hall not far from the observation room, talking to a nurse at her desk. Lacey bristles. "What is _she_ doing here?"

Whale and Hopper follow her gaze. Whale stiffly shrugged. "The major is his registered contact. It's her business to know his progress so she can approve his release."

Isabelle's outrage sent heat up into her face. "I am his _wife_."

Dr. Hopper cleared his throat to speak, but Whale spoke first.

" _EX_ wife officially, Ms.—"

He stopped when she glared at him, as anger was rare from the kindly librarian. "…Mrs. Gold. Legally we can't grant you the same rights to make decisions in regard to Mr. Gold's medical treatments as you would have had you not legally dissolved your marriage. Now power of attorney falls to the one who volunteered to pay for his care. Try not to worry Mrs. Gold. I'm sure the mayor has Mr. Gold's best interests at heart and will make those decisions accordingly."

Isabelle blinked at him disbelievingly, her eyes swimming with tears she refused to let fall. She straightens her shoulders. "Of course she does…"

Dr. Hopper shuffled uncomfortably and he and Dr. Whale exchanged a look after the piercing venom from her statement. Isabelle turned away from both of them, too disgusted to speak to either. She already knew Dr. Hopper was going to suggest they leave and Whale had already practically demanded it.

Stealing herself for the soul-rending pain she already knew she was both going to feel and inflict, Isabelle opened the door of the observation room into the padded room. She watched Robert's shoulders stiffen, his arms tighten around their daughter, who had gone from restless to fast asleep in her father's arms, drooling open-mouthed on his chest.

He rested his head over her small one and hummed an old folk song that tugged vaguely at her memory as she walked with dread towards them. His rock became faster, more pronounced, and their Rose stirred, reading the tension radiating from him even in her sleep. She sniffled and whined, and he shushed her gently and rubbed her back.

Belle knelt in front of them and soaked in as much of the sight of her frail and pale looking husband holding their child as she could. She tried to ignore the way his eyes skittered from one corner of the room to the other instead of looking at her. With a pang of grief, she imagined him holding Rose and looking up at her with a warm and happy grin, sitting safe and whole in their home, something that would have likely happened had his son not been murdered. Then she felt selfish…

He rubbed his stubbled cheek against their toddler daughter's forehead and his hand in soothing circles on her back until the child's breathing returned to its deep rhythm. He wouldn't look at Belle. "You're going to take her from me." He doesn't ask.

Tears filled her eyes and fell without her permission. "I'm sorry…. It's only for a little while, and then we'll be back tomorrow."

Gold almost cracked a smile, but still wouldn't look at her. "And the day after that…and the day after that…"

She nodded, sniffling heavily. "Yes, and very soon we'll take you home."

His smile then was almost genuine, but it was a broken and jagged thing made of a poison mirth. "Ohh, that won't be for a long, long while yet.:

She shook her head. "Don't say that. I'm not leaving you in here. You just have to show the doctors what you've shown me today, that you're ready to come home. You have to not hurt yourself again. Just do that for me, and you can come home with us."


End file.
